Moving Stories: Making Art and Dance Together at the Eric Carle Museum

This Spring the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art hosted a new program led by myself(dancer/choreographer Laura Pravitz), entitled, "Moving Stories: Making Art and DanceTogether". The offering took place in the Eric Carle Gallery, one of the main galleries at thisunique museum located in Western massachusetts, conceived and built to celebratenational and international picture book art.

Inspired by the museum's vision, I wrote a story called, "The Color Wheel andthe Empty Page", and led a group of 3-6 year olds and their adult companions through amoving story whose purpose was to illuminate and bring to life, through embodiedmovement, the picture books that companion their daily lives. Each movement task wasacompanied by carefully chosen classical music that complimented task and mood.The children were first asked if they had a book with pictures at home. They were thenasked to travel around the gallery returning with one thing that they liked. After theresponses were shared (there was a notable preference for animals!), they were told thatthey would be moving a story that might help to answer the question, "Do you everwonder how those pictures came to be?"

The story began, "Once upon a time, on this side of the border, there was an empty page.This page knew two things: That it was waiting for something, and, that it had no idea whatthat might be." The children entered a rectangular area marked off within the gallery withwhite silk lengths "Under the sky that welcomes all new beginnings". I and a staffmember lifted an ample length of pale blue silk that billowed as the sky, through which eachchild entered, arms and gaze lifted high and then opening arms wide, embodying the firstproperties of the empty page that took stock of itself daily, that of "length" and "width", toarrive at the "center" of the page (another embodied attribute) where they improvisedways to make themselves long and wide as the story continued:

"While page waited day after day for "something", it stayed very busy. It cleaned itscorners (with small white silk squares, the children ran two by two from corner to corner,dusting high and low); straightened its edges (a tiptoeing straight line around the border);and danced across its longest line (in groups of three, skipping across the diagonal, to circleround at the corner).

The story continued, "Now on the other side of the border, not too far away, there lived awheel of many colors. Each color also new in its bones that it was waiting for something,and believed that it was destined for a great and special purpose. But like the page, it hadno idea what that could be."

The children exited, again under the billowing sky, to be dressed in a primary orsecondary-colored silk wingspan, tied to their wrists with ribbons. Each received a colorsuited to them.

Each color danced one by one around the gallery ("The colors liked to awaken each morningand announce themselves proudly to the others"); joined hands in a star, with outer armextended to show their full color, ("Mostly, it spent its days going round and round") andturning in place.

One day, the colors, itching for something different, spin to the border of "A strange newplace, vast and white" One by one they cautiously dip a toe onto the page, ("What do youthink happened?")

The colors tiptoe all around, with page "Quite tickled, to say the least" as the colors leavetheir marks. The colors are so excited - so many ways to show their true selves!

Tired from all the dashing about, they slowly circle to the ground to nap. They dream aboutshapes. And designs. And lines. And stories. I soothed them with a breeze ofthe silk sky grazing them as they rested.

To replenish their fading color, they dip their hands into the well of color that fills their hearts,and with paintbrush fingers, play on their own heartstrings. Page, now delighted, asks ifthey can paint a rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, arc one by one acrossthe long diagonal to hold a rainbow shape. Time flies by; it is time to say goodbye topage, "Who by now was feeling very, very full."

The children, still garbed with their colored wings, then sailed through the grand foyer that islined with larger than life texturally-colored original Eric Carle panels, to the Art Studio, wherethey spent the next half hour dipping brush into paint to fill empty pages with color.

The Eric Carle Museum is the first in the U.S. devoted to national and international picturebook art. Founded by Eric Carle, renowned author ad illustrator of more than 70 booksincluding the classic "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and his wife, Barbara, its three galleries,grand foyer, art studio and library serve as resource and celebration of the picture book, withrotating exhibits honoring individual artists. Its mission is to provide "an enriching, dynamic,and supportive context for the development of literacy and to foster in visitors of all agesand backgrounds the confidence to appreciate and enjoy art of every kind". The Carle is anon-profit 501c3 institution. For further information, call 413-658-1100 or visit the Museum'swebsite at www.carlemuseum.org.

Laura Pravitz, IDMA; CLMA, is a dancer/choreographer living in the hills of WesternMassachusetts. She holds advanced standing degrees from the Isadora DuncanInternational Institute (IDII); is a Certified Laban Movement Analyst and trained DanceTherapist. She teaches movement exploration, Moving Myth and Story, and Duncanbased dance classes in schools, colleges and the community, and performs with IDIIdancers. She recently produced and directed performances of original Duncan works at theWIstariahurst Museum in Holyoke, MA. To contact, please email at:laura.pravitz@verizon.net

Moving Stories: Making Art and Dance Together at the Eric Carle Museum